According to a recent Consumer Reports story, NYU Langone Medical Center and Bellevue Hospital had to evacuate nearly 1,000 patients when the impact of Superstorm Sandy caused power and back-up systems to fail. When Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, failing generators contributed to the death of 215 patients in hospitals and nursing homes.
These numbers are shocking, but it’s not just hospitals that are susceptible to the catastrophic power loss. Incidents impacting power availability at critical and complex facilities like military bases or universities occur far too often. Aside from natural disasters, there are a number of threats to energy stability including brittle core electrical and mechanical infrastructure, an aging facility management workforce, and generally taxed power grids. In fact, there are 15 percent more power outages today than there were 10 years ago. Such outages cost the economy more than $125 billion per year, not to mention potential loss of life.
The immense threat posed by critical facility power loss has driven new federal disaster-recovery standards that are leading to new technologies and better approaches to better disaster response and energy management. The coming year is poised to be transformative as organizations invest in new processes that can make their facilities “smarter” to ensure the lights never go out.
The Rise of the Energy Internet of Things
The first big disruptor set to transform energy management this year is the Internet of Things (IoT). Already gaining traction in the consumer world with wearable devices and connected cars, IoT is set to be a game changer across additional industries, including energy. According to a November 2014 report from market research firm IDC, the worldwide IoT market is forecast to grow from $1.3 trillion in 2013 to $3.04 trillion in 2020.
The explosion of IoT adoption in the energy market is set to usher in a new area of performance insight and capability that will allow organizations to determine the health of their facilities and mitigate disaster – not just within specific buildings, but remotely across geographically dispersed assets.
The promise of IoT for energy is multi-fold. First, organizations can connect any existing facility equipment including meters, generators, automatic transfer switches, and intelligent mechanical equipment regardless of make, model, vintage, or protocol. Second, one can glean meaningful energy, equipment status, critical alarms, operational health, and readiness data from facility equipment. And lastly, one can determine the best way to control an entire facility equipment portfolio, execute critical power system compliance/readiness testing, and automate energy efficiency programs such as demand response.
With IoT, facility operators will soon transition “dumb” buildings into smart facilities that have the ability to gather the intelligence needed to foresee a potential failure and proactively initiate a fix. In the event of a natural disaster, IoT will help facilities better plan for and mitigate a potential failure.
Management Will Shift to a More Centralized Approach
IoT will be instrumental in driving new operational approaches such as centralized facilities management (CFM), which I believe will be the path forward for the facility system operators. While today’s focus has been primarily on siloed management approaches using single-site building energy management platforms, more and more focus will shift to multi-site facility system operators who will watch core energy operations at a central level.
In 2015, organizations will make great strides in achieving a centralized approach, but it will require a number of strategic changes. The first is prioritizing enterprise-wide capital based on critical need and not just greasing the proverbial “squeaky wheel.” This will require a change in mindset in terms of proactively gathering and utilizing data to make smarter and real-time operational decisions. For example, a facility may choose to replace one generator over another because it demonstrates greater wear and potential for failure, not just because it is the oldest generator in the facility. Shifting decision-making from local teams to the corporate level may not always be easy, but it is necessary.
After realigning the budgeting process, organizations will need to reevaluate if their current technology can meet the needs of a CFM approach. In the last several years, the industry has seen a trend toward software-based (not hardware) technology that can deliver a secure, vendor-neutral, and scalable platform for controlling and monitoring facility and energy asset performance.
In 2015, we’ll see increased adoption of CFM-driven software-based tools and platforms that can aggregate facility energy and operational information, health, state and readiness, compliance status and reporting, and other facility operating conditions and performance trends into a single control interface. Analyst firm Verdantix predicts the building energy management software market will grow to $514 million by 2019. Additionally, Navigant Research forecasts the global BEMS market will grow from $2.4 billion in 2014 to $5.6 billion in 2020.
With rapid growth and new technology adoption in mind, it will also be important that enterprises select a vendor-neutral platform and avoid proprietary systems that can’t integrate with best-of-breed market solutions. That sort of approach can not only cost an arm and leg to upgrade, but it also inhibits future progress.
A Future of Greater Energy Insight, Control, and Resiliency
In the coming years, we will see IoT-enabled CFM-oriented platforms lead the way in allowing the C-suite level to conduct broader disaster recovery and storm resiliency planning. Technology will drive a new wave of capability, allowing facility and corporate-level management to enable system-wide operational oversight and compliance, execute energy efficiency programs, and support budgeting and asset planning processes.
By providing greater insight into the health of the system, individual sites and even individual pieces of equipment, organizations will be better able to identify weak points and make changes to enhance resiliency. Additionally, the ability to centrally and remotely manage multiple sites could be critical in a disaster scenario where facility operations may need to be managed before local staff can make it to the scene. At the end of the day, it’s about making sure the processes and backup procedures are in place to ensure the lights never go out – even in the face of a major disaster.
Tom Willie is chief executive officer for Blue Pillar (www.bluepillar.com). He brings more than 15 years of successful technology and smart grid history to Blue Pillar, including a proven executive management track record. Willie was most recently CEO of Current Group, serving as Current’s chief product officer and chief operating officer since December 2003. He was also vice president/vice chairman of PRIME Alliance AISBL, a non-profit industry trade group focused on the development of a new open, public, and non-proprietary smart metering and smart grid communications solution. Prior to joining Current, Willie served as vice president and general manager of Siemens/Efficient Networks and held strategic worldwide marketing management positions at Texas Instruments and National Semiconductor. Willie obtained his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Purdue University.
